As ciphergoth says, your current answer is a good one (for writing), and will get easier with practice, though it might never get easy. As you say, it’s much better for writing than speech.
I find the advantage of speech is that I can check how people are interpreting me as I go along. But that’s a separate skill.
A shortcut that sometimes works for me is actively pretend (in my head) that the person I’m communicating with is exceptionally smart and knowledgeable and wise and admirable, and then write assuming that were true. (For me, the results differ from trying to make the other person think I believe this, or trying to prevent the other person from being offended.)
But I don’t use the shortcut much in writing, because thinking about how my audience will interpret what I say is a good practice. If I compose a message using a tenth the resources but that message is misunderstood a third of the time, I may feel efficient, but it’s not clear that I’m being efficient.
Good communication takes effort; when I don’t want to expend the effort I often do better to remain silent. (There are important exceptions, though.)
A few other simple things I try to remember:
I avoid “you” as a generic pronoun when discussing anything negative… e.g., in examples illustrating an error. I generally either introduce example third-person characters, or use the first person, depending on context. E.g., I’ll replace “If you act like a jerk, people won’t share their pie with you” with “If I act like a jerk, people won’t share their pie with me” or “If Sam acts like a jerk...” I find this not only is less likely to put people on the defensive, but it encourages me to imagine how I would feel if someone said that to me.
I avoid telling people what they think, or how they feel. I have yet to meet anyone who appreciates it. If I have to for some reason, I explicitly qualify that as merely my impression, but mostly I don’t think that makes much difference; I would do better to avoid it completely.
I try to find something to agree with. If someone says five things and I disagree with four of them, I’ll often start out “I agree that .” before going on to articulate my disagreement. Sometimes I’ll stop there, too. (This is similar to the positive-reinforcement rule Vaniver mentions.)
Also: there are several “how to deal with difficult communicators”-type books on the self-help market; you might find it worthwhile to browse a few and see if you recognize yourself in their descriptions of people being dealt with. The only one that comes to mind right now is Elgin’s “Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense” series.
As ciphergoth says, your current answer is a good one (for writing), and will get easier with practice, though it might never get easy. As you say, it’s much better for writing than speech.
I find the advantage of speech is that I can check how people are interpreting me as I go along. But that’s a separate skill.
A shortcut that sometimes works for me is actively pretend (in my head) that the person I’m communicating with is exceptionally smart and knowledgeable and wise and admirable, and then write assuming that were true. (For me, the results differ from trying to make the other person think I believe this, or trying to prevent the other person from being offended.)
But I don’t use the shortcut much in writing, because thinking about how my audience will interpret what I say is a good practice. If I compose a message using a tenth the resources but that message is misunderstood a third of the time, I may feel efficient, but it’s not clear that I’m being efficient.
Good communication takes effort; when I don’t want to expend the effort I often do better to remain silent. (There are important exceptions, though.)
A few other simple things I try to remember:
I avoid “you” as a generic pronoun when discussing anything negative… e.g., in examples illustrating an error. I generally either introduce example third-person characters, or use the first person, depending on context. E.g., I’ll replace “If you act like a jerk, people won’t share their pie with you” with “If I act like a jerk, people won’t share their pie with me” or “If Sam acts like a jerk...” I find this not only is less likely to put people on the defensive, but it encourages me to imagine how I would feel if someone said that to me.
I avoid telling people what they think, or how they feel. I have yet to meet anyone who appreciates it. If I have to for some reason, I explicitly qualify that as merely my impression, but mostly I don’t think that makes much difference; I would do better to avoid it completely.
I try to find something to agree with. If someone says five things and I disagree with four of them, I’ll often start out “I agree that .” before going on to articulate my disagreement. Sometimes I’ll stop there, too. (This is similar to the positive-reinforcement rule Vaniver mentions.)
Also: there are several “how to deal with difficult communicators”-type books on the self-help market; you might find it worthwhile to browse a few and see if you recognize yourself in their descriptions of people being dealt with. The only one that comes to mind right now is Elgin’s “Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense” series.